Mara let the room sit in silence for one more second. Then she explained, in plain words, what everyone had just seen. “There’s a safety system in Lattice,” she said. “I built it. It uses my validation code. That’s why I can turn core features off and on. It proves I was the original builder.”
Ethan’s smile vanished. He looked from the demo unit to Mara’s phone like he could not connect the two. “That’s not possible,” he said, but his voice sounded thin. Mara did not argue. She watched him realize it in real time: the product he bragged about still answered to her.